There is no doubt about Sonia’s control over the Congress party. The years of drift and lack of leadership between 1996 and 1998 taught Congressmen that the Gandhi family was the only glue holding this party of ambitious folks together.

In March, Digvijaya Singh, exchief minister of Madhya Pradesh and member of the Congress Working Committee, said that the party's model of two centres of power had failed. He said that the Congress president should be the Prime Minister when the party could form governments.

Digvijaya was obviously not being critical of Congress president Sonia Gandhi. So, this was a thinly-veiled attack on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Since 2004, when Sonia appointed Singh to the job, the PM runs the government, while Sonia runs the party. On Wednesday, the Congress got down to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the UPA's second term in power. But is there a rift between party and government?

Family Matters

There is no doubt about Sonia's control over the Congress party. The years of drift and lack of leadership between 1996 and 1998 taught Congressmen that the Gandhi family was the only glue holding this party of ambitious folks together.

This again became apparent from August 4, 2011, when it was announced that Sonia had left India for treatment overseas. Soon after, the Anna Hazare agitation started attracting large crowds and zillions of minutes of television time. In Sonia's absence, the Congress panicked. Mindlessly, it committed a political blunder. It arrested Hazare, leading to a classic civil disobedience standoff. Of course, over time, the inchoate Hazare movement died a natural death. And, by then, Sonia was also back at the helm of the party.

Singh's grip over the administration is less clear. In fact, between 2004 and 2012, the Cabinet, India's highest policymaking body chaired by Singh, took very few decisions. Even mildly contentious stuff like the pricing of natural gas, say, was palmed off to empowered groups of ministers.

The Party Regime

The word "empowered" meant that the group's decision was final and needed no Cabinet approval. Most of these EGoMs were led by Pranab Mukherjee and some by Palaniappan Chidambaram. By finessing decision-making from the Cabinet to the EGoMs, Singh probably tried to shield himself from controversy. But, in the process, he also ceded much of his own authority and control over government.

UPA-I was backed by Left parties. Then, there was a clear tension between Sonia's welfarist mindset, which favoured things like the right to information or the NREGA programme, and Singh's increasingly conservative outlook.

When the Sonia-led National Advisory Council pushed for NREGA, say, Singh pushed back through the PM's Economic Advisory Council, led by his friend C Rangarajan. After the Left dropped out in 2008 and Congress won a bigger mandate in 2009, Singh probably assumed that the government was his to run. Two months after winning elections, Singh visited Egypt where he issued a joint statement with his Pakistan counterpart, arguing for better ties between the two countries.

Singh's timing was awful: his affirmation of friendship came barely eight months after the Mumbai terror attack. A red-faced Congress immediately disowned the statement.

Scams and Stutter

Between 2004 and 2009, Singh also held the portfolio of coal minister. The country's coal policy is lousy: only state-owned Coal India can mine coal. Over the years, power and metal makers have also been allotted captive mines through an opaque, capricious process.

But, by 2004, growth was chugging along nicely and it seemed a shame to keep so much coal under the ground, while the country faced energy shortages. So, during his term as coal mantri, Singh allocated many coal blocks to scores of public and private businesses.

The only catch: there seemed to be no clear-cut rules to determine who got what. Worse, there are no detailed minutes of these meetings that could explain why company X got a mine and not company Y.

Last year, the state auditor CAG tabled a report in Parliament in which it alleged that the allotments were dodgy. It said the allotments had enriched the beneficiaries by astronomical sums of money. This snowballed into a probe led by CBI, monitored by courts.

Earlier this month, Singh had to sack two colleagues close to him: rail minister Pawan Bansal and law mantri Ashwani Kumar. Bansal had to go because his relatives were caught taking bribes for railways jobs. But Singh hesitated to drop Kumar: after all, Kumar was only trying to take care of his boss' interests by vetting a CBI report on coal before it was shown to the judges. Congressmen say his hand was forced by Sonia, who felt that the political cost of holding on to Kumar was too high.

Asked whether he would consider a third term, Singh said he'd cross the bridge when he came to it. But his chances look slim even if the Congress gets the numbers. First is his age. Second, the Congress may need the support of the Left, which is not fond of Singh. Finally, it is Singh's indifferent performance in the last four years that will go against him.